Page 77 of The Dark Fae Princess
“The lightning is all around you. Always in the sky, even if you are on Light Fae lands,” Daddy says. “Pull on it, as you would with your hand. Think of the sword as an extension of your arm.”
“Okay,” I say, totally getting that. “How hard can it be, right?”
The silence that comes back at me tells me that it might be quite hard. But still. If this is a Royal thing, and I’m a Royal, I should be able to do this.
Raising my sword up above my head, I look up at the sky and focus on a dark gray cloud overhead. A flash of lightning will appear there eventually, I just have to wait and concentrate and grab onto it.
Several seconds pass and then there it is, a quick flash that I latch onto with my mind and try to draw it down.
Sadly, I miss the sword completely and draw the lightning into the ground next to me, kicking up a large chunk of grass and dirt that covers me.
“Yuck!” I splutter, coughing soil out of my mouth and brushing it from my eyes. I shake my ponytail out, grass and dirt clumps flying out of it. “That was close!” I declare with triumph, but the looks I get back as I glare at each person in turn are of the sympathetic variety.
Total and epic failure then.
“Use me,” Rook says quietly, and all eyes turn to him. “Draw on my magick to amplify yours like you did in the barn.”
“What happened in the barn?” Jerrick is quick to ask.
But mother is far more interested in the rest of what he said. She comes closer and gives him a searching look that he shies away from. “You mean, like a familiar?”
“Of sorts,” Rook mutters.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” Jerrick grits out.
“Doesn’t make it any less true,” Rook rises to the challenge, clenching his fists.
“Start at the beginning,” Mother says as Daddy gives him a ferocious look that he withers under, hating the attention he has drawn onto himself.
He sighs. “I’m a Shifter. Part Shifter, part Dark Fae. A raven,” he explains.
Trey snorts, nodding his head as if he knew it all along.
“Even though she didn’t know it at the time, Savannah used me to strengthen her power against Anders. It also strengthened me. I grew bigger and slightly more powerful.”
“Hmm. You are connected,” Mother states. “This will work.” She steps back and gestures that we should try again.
I blink and raise the sword again. I concentrate this time on Rook and not the lightning, figuring there’s enough of it up there to call it to me.
I stare into his beautiful blue eyes that suddenly go wide as the bolt of lightning strikes him right in the chest and he falls backwards as stiff as a board.
“Fuck!” I cry, my heart thumping in my chest as the fear races through me. I drop the swords as I fall to my knees next to him “Rook!” I shake him. “Rook?”
He is lying completely still, his shirt smoking from where he was struck, his eyes still wide open.
“Oh, shit!” I sob. “Oh shit, I killed him. I—I…”
He sits up suddenly, blinking his eyes before he falls back down to the ground with a loud groan.
Relief floods me and I fall on him, sobbing openly into his shirt as I clutch him, not caring what this looks like to my parents. If I’d lost him by my own hand, it would have killed me.
“Oh, Rook,” I murmur to him. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“F-Fine,” he rasps. “Just give me a minute.”
I look up at everyone staring down at us in shock.
I nearly killed him.
